The English Beat goes on, despite it all

By Ann Wood Banner Correspondent

Saturday

Aug 4, 2018 at 9:40 AM

When Dave Wakeling’s band, The English Beat, formed in 1979, it was a hybrid of all of the music that his mates loved — ska, reggae, soul, punk and pop — and its lyrics were social commentary that Wakeling hoped would help change the world.

“You might as well, because it’s probably not going to make it even worse,” he says about putting their ideals into the songs. The goal was to make the world a better place than the one their parents had left them, but Wakeling admits that it didn’t quite work out that way. “You would have thought all [the] clever lyrics… would have made a difference. I know that they made a difference individually, but not socially.”

Still, the high-octane dance band brings joy to audience members who move at their speed. Wakeling, along with Matt Morrish on sax, Kevin Lum and Minh Quan on keys, Mark London Sims on bass and Mark Spiller on drums, will have Truro dancing when they hit the Payomet stage next Thursday, Aug. 9.

“It’s like a circus has exploded,” Wakeling says about the show he’s got touring. “It’s anywhere between 90 minutes and two hours of well-paced dancing. Faster songs, slower ones,” Wakeling says. “You can more or less dance along all the way through it without losing your breath… or dance harder.”

The show is not just about the dancing, however. That’s because The English Beat released a new album, “Here We Go Love,” about a month ago.

“Every show is a record release party at the moment,” Wakeling says.

The 62-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist from Birmingham, England, has worked tirelessly to help improve the world in the last 40 years. Wakeling donated to nuclear disarmament, to stop global warming and to help free Nelson Mandela from prison. He even took a hiatus from The English Beat to work fulltime at Greenpeace.

“I enjoyed it, but we used to laugh at it sometimes,” he says. It seemed ironic that even though Greenpeace was out to save the world, it treated its workers cruelly. “People used to get Christmas cards with pink slips in it. … It was a fascinating journey, because it was a multinational corporation of people who never took instruction from anybody. In the long run, Greenpeace and groups like that have done an enormous amount of good [by changing] attitudes of where we stand in the natural order of things. It’s not quite so funny [anymore] to throw litter on the floor or throw plastic on the beach.”

But music called him back, as does the road.

“I like touring the best. I always did, really. This is the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life,” Wakeling says, adding that as long as he paces himself and makes sure that his first batch of energy goes to the performance, he finds that the show goes well. There will be a sound check, Wakeling will eat something light, and perhaps watch the news before the show.

“I’m just hitting the 40-year anniversary. I think I’m just getting a handle on this. There used to be a lot more exhilaration and excitement offstage,” he says. “If you’re going to be a perfectionist, you’re going to try to sing the best at the show with a casual, offhand delivery, but exact at the same time.”

Life as a musician is different than it used to be, but not all that different. Indeed, what comes around, goes around. For example, The Beat’s first single to hit the UK charts by Christmas of 1979 — Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown” — was, obviously, on vinyl. Now vinyl is back, and Wakeling looks forward to having “Here We Go Love” get its vinyl release, which should be happening at any moment. He likes the sound of records better than CDs — he never got used to cold digital recordings.

“We knew that a lot of people were going to hear it on CD, so we tried to make it as warm as we could and we did a pretty good job,” he says. But still, he thinks people should really get it on vinyl.

While he awaits that, The English Beat is touring hard. Wakeling loves to watch people of all ages and races dancing together.

“It’s a nice feeling watching that diverse set of people getting along quite well in time with each other,” Wakeling says. “It gives you hope for the future.”